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We’ve got a doozy of an update for you this week! Another often requested robot finally joins the team, a plant and planet make an appearance, and Nom Nom Galaxy wins another award!

Hungry soup connoisseurs!

One of my favorite things about developing Nom Nom Galaxy is taking the game to shows and getting to talk to people about the game and watch them play. We’ve been in Early Access for about six months now and talking with you all on Steam, and with the popularity of live streaming it’s easy to see people playing Nom Nom Galaxy online. But there’s nothing quite like seeing it in person and interacting with the players.

Excellence in Audio! This might be the Electric Bends first award!

This year we’ve been fortunate enough to take Nom Nom to three(!) shows, BIG in Brazil, PAX Prime, and GDC China last week as a finalist for the Independent Games Festival. Nom Nom took the top prize at BIG, was part of the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX Prime, and now we’ve been honored with an Excellence in Audio Award from IGF China!

We’d like to thank everyone at GDC China and IGF China for having us at the show and honoring us with the award. The audio in Nom Nom Galaxy was all done by our in-house jam band, The Electric Bends. This award is sure to push those guys back into the studio to cook up some more tunes for the Galaxy!

On to this week’s update!

Atomic Daawwwwwg!

A pooch with a greenthumb!

The latest addition to your robot army is sure to be a welcome one. Since Nom Nom hit Early Access, there’s been on element that’s been from factory automation: Harvesting ingredients! No matter how well you’ve designed your factory, your Astroworker has always had to do the dirty work of pulling up the plants. Soup Co. has sent some relief in the form of the Astroworker’s best friend: Ben!

Most dogs like to destroy gardens, but Ben is special case. You can unlock Ben for three keys in the research menu and at a cost of 150 gold per robot. After summoning Ben, hand him an ingredient to sniff and he’ll move to harvest plants that have fully grown and leave one ingredient behind for it the next plant to grow. Ben will deposit the ingredients in his doghouse, which can be connected to your factory from the sides or the bottom. He’ll also climb up one block terrain, giving you some more building options. Like all of the other robots, give him a punch and he’ll drop whatever he’s carrying. To change what Ben is harvesting, simply give him another ingredient.

Killer Pumpkins

The plant life in Nom Nom Galaxy is nothing to shake a stick, or buzzsaw, at! In the tradition of overly aggressive tomatys and mean mushrooms, we introduce the latest in pugilistic produce, the Killer Pumpkin! (That’s a temp name. If you have any ideas for another, let us know!)

This pumpkin grows from vines and drops down upon unsuspecting Astroworkers. If it misses, the pumpkin does a rolling attack to pummel its target!

Pumpkins only appear on Iddil now, but expect to find them on other planets soon!

Other Updates/Fixes

Added a VS screen at the start of the game

Rival company market share now appears in the planet percentage area

When playing co-op and holding an item, the factory will only blink for the player holding the item

New stage, Kakoi, added

We’ve removed the winter season because of a silly bug. It’ll be back once we’ve squashed it. But for now, enjoy a Game of Thrones style Summer.

Added an arrow to help you get back to your money and matter after dying.

Our update this week that addresses some outstanding issues, including the tutorial, vehicles and combat – all things we talked to you guys about during PAX. We’ve also added a new robot that addresses one of the most requested additions to the factories: throwing ingredients down! Before we get into the update, Nom Nom Galaxy continued its tour of gaming events this last weekend by making its debut at IndieCade!

The latest build was available for would be soup entrepreneurs to try out. This build for the PS4 includes our new tutorial, which was debuted for the first time at the show. We’ve also been busy getting ready for yet another show, GDC China. Nom Nom Galaxy was nominated for Best Game in the Independent Games Festival there, wish us luck!

Okay, on to the meat and potatoes (soup)!

Down We Go!

This week we’d like to introduce a new robot to the team, Travis! Travis will add a new dimension to your factories by allowing you to finally send ingredients down.

Make Your Mark

While we love Soup Co., there’s nothing quite like owning your own company. From now on soup meisters can name their own company when starting their factory. The name will appear in the top right corner next to your rivals. We’re looking for ways to display this more prominently. How would you like to brand your company in Nom Nom Galaxy?

Learning the Ropes

There’s a brand new tutorial stage available at the stage select menu. This replaces the original tutorial we launched with at the beginning of Early Access. We think this new tutorial does a much better job of explaining just how to get your factory up and running. It’s still a little bit raw (keyboard and mouse prompts aren’t in just yet) so we’re looking for any feedback on how we can improve it.

That New Car Smell

There have been numerous adjustments to balance with the vehicles, including costs, and power duration. It will now be more apparent when a vehicle is running out of power. The Hoverboard was a little bit overpowered and has had it’s jumping toned down. And the Pogo, which wasn’t very useful before, has received a major update! Pressing the RB will now extend a drill that can remove blocks or attack enemies and animals! Finally, we’ve added a slightly localized Chinese version in the current update to assist (me) with showing NNG in the IGF Pavillion at GDC China this weekend. It’s still a work in progress.

Taking Nom Nom Galaxy to shows like PAX, Gamescom and EuroGamer Expo is an incredible way for us to learn just “how” people are playing the game. Even with us in Early Access, there’s no substitute for actually watching people starting their first soup empire from scratch.One of the things we learned, after copious amounts of water and what seemed like thousands of throat lozenges, is that the tutorial was painfully lacking in… just about everything! We did a lot – A LOT – of talking during those shows.

In a traditional sandbox game the player is usually free to explore the world and discover the scope of things they can do at their own pace. Nom Nom isn’t a pure sandbox though, and the player needs to understand how everything works very quickly in order to ship soup, make money, and defend themselves from attack.

But it’s difficult to throw that at the player at the same time. One of the things I learned when teaching people to play was to hold off on teaching them about the buzzsaw. Once the power to destroy is in players hands, all kinds of block-collapsing hell broke loose! It was like watching Nom Nom Tetris.

Thankfully, with the help of our partners at Double Eleven, we’re in the process of completely revamping the tutorial. The player will now crash land on the planet and gradually make their way to the first base, learning about the Astroworker abilities as they go. After arriving at the base, you’ll do some quick maintenance, ship your first can of soup, and start defending yourself form those pesky rival soup companies.

We’re still working on it, but we’re with the progress we’ve made thus far. Look for the new tutorial in the next update!

Last week we were occupied with the Tokyo Game Show and didn’t have a blog update, but we’re back in force this week with some welcome changes! We’ve been listening to the feedback on social media/Steam and this week’s update addresses some of the issues our fellow Astroworkers have been concerned with. This isn’t the last update, by any means, so continue to let us know how you feel about the changes as we develop Nom Nom.

Jump Jet

Gracefully navigating hostile environments is paramount for any successful Astroworker. For just three research keys, this new upgrade gives you the ability to double-jump!

Muscleman

One of the most popular requests has been the ability to carry more than one item. This upgrade has been long debated by the team on how it should actually be implemented. In the distant past we had a backpack type inventory, but it was cumbersome and therefore removed. We want to bring some of the functionality, however, so we’re starting by giving the Astroworker an upgrade to carry two items.

We’re still not sold on how this feature is currently working, so we want to hear players feedback on this one. Basically, this is a temporary solution that could be permanent (or expanded) based on your feedback. So let us know what you think!

Auto-climb

Improving getting around the planet has been a concern for us. Too often it’s easier to just mow down everything in your way instead of actually walking around the terrain. We’ve added an auto-climb for one-step blocks now that we think will make it a little less frustrating.

The speed of regular climbing has also been adjusted. We’ve slowed it down so that you can hang on to edges a little easier. Please let us know if the speed is too slow.

Aim Lock

It’s now possible to lock the position of the Buzzsaw and Shotgun by pressing L2 while using them. This makes it easier to jump and use both items.

First Rocket

You’ll now be treated to a nice little animation when your first rocket goes out to customers!

Shotgun Floppy

The shotgun will now destroy blocks containing floppy disks.

Secondary Damage

Combat has become a lot more fun with this update. When you hit something with your buzzsaw now, other attacks, like bullets, missiles, and attacks from other Astroworkers, will add to the damage. This sets up some interesting combo opportunities. It’s just the first of many improvements we have for combat.

Ver. 0.17 Hotfix

A combat bug that caused Astroworkers to take damage in the same fashion as enemies snuck its way into 0.16. This has been fixed in 0.17!

We got some good news here at Soup Co. today! Nom Nom Galaxy has been nominated as a Finalist at Independent Games Festival China!

Here’s to hoping we take home the Grand Soup Prize! That’s probably not what it’s called, but we’ll rechristen it if we win!

This week we’ll be doing the first of our Post-PAX updates for Nom Nom. PAX was a boon for us because we got to see what new players experiecne when they first set out to start their soup empire. These updates will be focused on addressing issues that we heard at the show and a few that have been echoing on the Steam forums.

Astroworkers will now have a base 15% increase to movement speed. Coupled with the AstroBoots upgrade, you’ll be a Soup Speedster!

There seemed to be some confusion about rotating corridors for new players at PAX. Until we work out a more intuitive way to let players know that most base pieces can be rotated, we’ve added Vertical Corridor pieces to the Building Blueprints.

So many options, so little Matter…

Ladders will no longer be the end all for supporting structures in midair. Any buildings places above ladders without proper support will now fall.

Girders and struts now transfer power to adjacent buildings! This will help base design variety. There’s also a power indicator on blueprints when placing buildings.

Now you’re building with power!

Finally, we’ve fixed the zoom issue with the UFO Boss a.k.a the PAPP (Passive Aggressive Pestilence Platform). When playing co-op, you can now see what you’re doing. Soup Co. would like to apologize for that. ;-)

Last weekend we brought Nom Nom Galaxy back for our 2nd year in the Indie MEGABOOTH at PAX Prime. Once again, we ladled out some of the stew we’ve been cooking for the gamers at the show to taste test. The results? We had an amazing time showing the game and brought home a ton great feedback from talking to everyone and watching you play. We also gave out Nom Nom buttons, t-shirts to a few lucky folks, and watched our Nom Nom fans spread around take over PAX! You couldn’t go anywhere without seeing someone cooling themselves off with one!

And coming out to PAX always reminds us that we really do have some of the greatest fans in the galaxy! We’re working hard to push an update that will reflect the feedback we got at the show. Look for it soon!

We had to turn this…

… into this in just a couple hours!

Thanks to all the people who came to play! The booth stayed packed!

Yamatron did an awesome job creating these “cans” for the booth.

Only by pulling the Golden PixelJunk Crown, could you get a coveted t-shirt!

One of the lucky NNG T-shirt winners!

The crowd waits hungrily for a chance to play.

BitSummit Champion & former Q-Gamer James Mielke came by the booth to spread some love!

Astroworkers, welcome to PAX Update 0.14! This update will be on the floor at PAX today, but even if you can’t make it to Seattle you can enjoy the soups of our labors! This update adds more ingredients, more enemies, and some adjustments to research. We’ve also thrown in some nagging bugs.

Because of the large amount of changes in the current build, we recommend you delete your previous save data. You can delete your saved data from the planet select menu. With that said, let’s look at the new stuff!

Like a Boss

Nom Nom Galaxy is all about battling rival corporations for galactic domination of the soup market. Up to this point, your rivals have only sent small waves of alien mercs to disrupt your operation. Starting with this update, they’ll be bringing out the big guns! Or should we say, the big UFOs!

This behemoth will appear after you’ve launched a certain number of rockets. When your rivals feel like you’re getting a little too big for your britches, they’ll send over this ship to knock you down a few pegs. You’ll have to make some sacrifices to repel it!

Exploring Strange New Worlds

The ‘galaxy’ in Nom Nom Galaxy continues to expand. You’ll now be able to visit Iddil, a heavily forested planet, Unba,a water world, and the mountainous Pomelyk. Each planet will require it’s own strategy in order to build a successful factory. Gameplay for these planets is in development, so we’d love to get feedback from the community on them.

IDDIL

Iddil introduces new fruit bearing trees and spiny thorn plants. Neither can be moved easily, so you’ll have to plan your base around them.

UNBA

If you fancy a swim, Unba is your planet. With most of the stage area covered in water, you’ll have to create island bases in different places to expand your factory. The ever-important Oxyflower has the added benefit of repelling water, so you can use it to plant under the waves, or prevent water from entering your base.

POMELYK

The most challenging of the new stages is Pomelyk. The rocky planet offers few places to cultivate your ingredients and deposits of matter and discs are sparse, so you’ll have to maximize your management skills to expand.

Expanding Your Pallet

There are a few new flora to add to your recipe book now. We haven’t had proper trees in Nom Nom but that’s because we’ve only been exploring deserts and plains. Iddil is our first planet to introduce a forest biome.

The trees of Iddil bear delicious fruit, but are sturdy and can’t be chopped down. You’ll have to plan your factories around these trees to harvest them. The trees will die in winter, so stock up on fruit for the cold season.

Needle Grass, like the trees of Iddil, is difficult to get rid of. It’s covered in thorns so punching it will only leave you with bloody gloves, and if you dig it up with your buzzsaw, the remaining bits will sprout as new plants. You’ll have to use other tools to take it out-but it’s rumored that beautiful flowers sometimes blossom on its thorny branches…

Nom Nom now has an uber tuber! Yams grow underground, and like the trees and Splinter Grass, are resistant to conventional harvesting. If you want to get to the goods, you’ll have to dig them up!

AdjustmentsThe following items have had their costs adjusted:

Hoverboard –
Increased Research key costs from 2 to 3
Increased the Gold cost from 100g to 1200g

Jack
Increased Research keys costs from 3 to 6
Increased Gold cost from 100g to 450g

Floppy disks should be easier to dig up now.

Mole enemies won’t be nearly as persistent in destroying your base and will disappear after paying you a visit.

Bug Fixes– Fixed an issue where you could create two offices on the Tutorial Stage
– Fixed a bug that allowed ivy and seaweed to grow in places they normally couldn’t

With only one week left we’re in the thick of getting Nom Nom Galaxy for PAX next week! I’m proud to say that Nom Nom Galaxy was selected to be part of the Indie MEGABOOTH once again this year. And as you’d expect from Q-Games, we’re bring some new flavors to the show! More details are coming in next week’s update, but as a hint I’ll just say that the Soup Co.’s empire is expanding into new regions, bringing new tastes and new dangers!

Last year we gave out fans, buttons, and Japanese Kit Kats to folks that stopped by to play Nom Nom. This year we’re upping the ante! We’ve got all of the above, plus some pretty sweet Nom Nom Galaxy t-shirts for the lucky folks!

Buku Buttons!

You’ll find Nom Nom Galaxy in the galactic corner of the Indie MEGABOOTH in booth #41 next to 17-Bit’s Galak-Z. Come join us in space!

Astroworkers! Ever since we first announced Nom Nom Galaxy (PixelJunk Inc. at the time), we’ve been bombarded with questions about our decision to bring a PixelJunk title to Steam before the our usual home, PlayStation. From the beginning of development we’ve wanted Nom Nom Galaxy to be on as many platforms as possible, so it hurt our hearts each time we had to dodge that question. Because of the size of the Nom Nom Galaxy team, it wasn’t something that we could commit to with the game still far from done on Steam. But for the past few months, we’ve been working with Double Eleven on make all of our dreams come true. We’re excited to finally announce that Nom Nom Galaxy will be coming to PlayStation 4 AND PlayStation Vita!

The Galactic Soup Alliance!

You may know Double Eleven from their work porting PixelJunk Monsters Ultimate and Shooter to Steam, and more recently the outstanding PixelJunk Shooter Ultimate for the PlayStation 4 and Vita. We’re now co-developing Nom Nom Galaxy with Double Eleven. The added man-power means that we’re going to not only bring Nom Nom Galaxy to PlayStation platforms, but we’ll be able to add even more content to the game! If you’re interested in seeing how Nom Nom Galaxy is shaping up on the PlayStation 4, you can check it out on the Gamescom and PAX show floors this month!

Terraforming in comfort in Cologne(Thanks to Gareth Wright from Double Eleven for the photo)

Fortune 500 in 5 minutes? No problem!(Thanks to Gareth Wright from Double Eleven for the photo)

We’ve also got a host of campaigns coming up this month for the frugal shopper. You can pick up PixelJunk Shooter on Steam now in this week’s Humble Bundle. There are more deals on the way, so keep tabs on @PixelJunkNews on Twitter and PixelJunk on Facebook!

Well, one month sure flies by! We”ve been hard at work on a multitude of things, both big and small, for this update. We”re also getting Nom Nom Galaxy ready for the big game shows coming up in August. We won”t get into where (or how) you”ll see Nom Nom Galaxy this month, but we”re pretty excited with the upcoming announcements! Look for more news next week! Because of the upcoming shows, we”re holding some stuff back for this update anda few other features aren”t completed. But that”s what Early Access is all about – testing, testing, and more testing. We”d love to hear your feedback on the changes, so please leave comments! With that said, let”s get to it!

Research

One issue that”s come up in feedback constantly has been Astroworker walking speed. In a game that requires you to ship your stock as quickly as possible, being a slow poke doesn”t bode well for future promotions. There were debates among the team on whether a speed boost the should be applied given to the Astroworker by default, as a research upgrade, or as a boost button. For now we”ve added a new research item to speed up the Astroworker by 30%, so please check it out and let us know what you think in the comments/forums. Limits on purchasing research at the end of each day have also been removed! Shopping spree! Finally, we”ve added a new structure, Storage, that allows you to store up to 6 ingredients! We think you”ll really appreciate it when you see what else is coming…

Removed the limit on the number of research upgraded you can purchase at the end of each day

New Astro-boots research available! Increase the online slots speed of your Astroworker by 30%!

Added Storage to research

Environment

In order to accommodate some of the new and more varied environments we”re working on, we”ve changed the way that oxygen works with water on the planets. Mon Cala, anyone?

Oxygen will now deplete twice as fast when under water.

Oxygen pockets can now be created underwater. These pockets will prevent water from entering, allowing you to expand your base underwater.

UI Changes

The planet select has been revamped to give you that universal flavor!

On the select rival screen before returning to a planet you”ve previously gotten 100% market share, the following information has been adjusted.

Total days will now accurately report previous play sessions

Enemies defeated will be cumulative for all play sessions

Fixed bug where screenshots of previous play sessions were being overwritten

You now find more information about rival corporations at the rival selection screen before starting a planet.

Controls

We”ve moved from the Maintenance Menu button for keyboard and mouse controls to the CTRL key.

Tutorial changes

With Nom Nom Galaxy heading to show floors this month, we”re shoring up some of the tutorials. This will be tweaked up until the last minute, so we”re looking for feedback from the community on how to improve the tutorials. What did you find difficult to understand when you started playing?

Game hints will now remain on the screen longer

Major hints during the tutorial will now pause the game

Testing

The following features are still being implemented and may be have bugs.

Astroworkers can now reset their base at the planet selection screen by pressing “Y” button on the controller, or “R” on the keyboard.

You can now build a second office on planets you return to after beating a rival with 100% market share. Currently, this is only working on Egon.

Seasons

We”ve begun testing for seasons, and winter is coming! The seasons are currently on a 15 minute cycle and only switch between summer and winter. Also, the winter assets are still being completed so you”ll only see a blue filter and some icy tiles for now.

Winter effects-Grass, Sunflower, and Ivy will die, making it impossible to grow or harvest them.
-Plants will not grow or spread seeds during winter.
-Animal nests shrivel up, and animals don”t leave their nests

As you can see, winter is pretty harsh, so be sure to make good use of the new technology!